View Full Version : ISP Virgin Media Business UK Calls for End to Email File Attachment Bottlenecks
ISP Virgin Media Business UK Calls for End to Email File Attachment Bottlenecks
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/02/11/isp-virgin-media-business-uk-calls-for-end-to-email-file-attachment-bottlenecks.html
Nothing like sending somebody a Linux DVD as one file Attachment. :D
Still people who use dialup 56k imagine them trying open email 1GB in size be there all year.
Toonshorty
13-02-11, 09:15
Still people who use dialup 56k imagine them trying open email 1GB in size be there all year.
A 56KB connection does 56KB/s.
A 1GB file is 1000MB which is 1024000KB.
1024000/56 is 18285.71 seconds.
This is 304 minutes or 5 hours.
Seems to short for dial-up.
Were 56KB connections Kilobytes or Kilobits?
bits real speed more like 3-4KB
more like 5654.4 minutes at 3KB/s or 94.24 Hours or roughly 4 days
A 56KB connection does 56KB/s.
A 1GB file is 1000MB which is 1024000KB.
1024000/56 is 18285.71 seconds.
This is 304 minutes or 5 hours.
Seems to short for dial-up.
Were 56KB connections Kilobytes or Kilobits?
Bandwidth is always bits :)
What comedians they are (Virgin) and they don't understand how the data is transferred.
All email attachments get sent as plain text using a code/decode method that does no compression and is extremely and I mean EXTREMELY inefficient in time, resources and space - and is uploaded for each recipient.
TCP/IP and especially Torrent (legal use) are far more efficient methods. Post the file (once) and email just the link.
Gunslinger
14-02-11, 01:34
VM have no room to talk, i've lost emails, never receieved one's ive sent myself to myself from a friends laptop in the next room, and have friends in the same boat, 90% of the time there are attachments in place.
Their webmail certificates have expired, and their web mail site crashes regularily, itt is so bad i am going back to my hushmail account i think !
It's about time they did something about this, I get far to sick of having to upload larger files to a server, then link it to an email rather than just attach it. Maximum attachment size has hardly changed at all in the past 5 years or so... why?
Gunslinger
14-02-11, 07:17
Because their server side snooping software would crash trying to scan all the DVD's people would send :lol:
In all seriousness, i would not be surprised if it was linked to abilities to scan/snoop .... the governments would probably struggle to snoop on the sheer volume of files
I explained why!! Email is GROSSLy inefficient and the internet would grind to a halt.
Edit:
Oh I forgot. There is no error correction in mail transmission.
I explained why!! Email is GROSSLy inefficient and the internet would grind to a halt.
This. Email is a terrible way to share files, because some genius is always going to CC their 1GB zipfile of baby photos to their entire contacts lists, resulting in massive duplication because the data is contained in each and every email sent out.
There are plenty of free file hosting services out there, and ISPs are never going to start allowing huge attachments because the potential for DOS-style abuse is just too great.
To explain a little further:
Email is/was designed as a quick and dirty way of getting small amounts of text across the internet. The whole transmission method/protocol was designed originally to be used from a keyboard and data is transmitted as Ascii 7bit characters - which is fine for text as most Western text coding only uses 7 of the 8 bits in a byte.
HOWEVER, Data files use 8 bit bytes, so in order not to lose the 8th bit all data has to be converted to a stream of 7 bit characters at the sending end and converted back again at the receiving end. This means that EVERY data file transmitted via Email not only takes longer but actually is a minimum of 12.5% larger than it would be.
As someone so neatly put it on another forum.
"It is a bit like trying to get Royal Mail to post your house contents. They would have to chop it up into little bits, post them, and reassemble them at the other end -and hope that none of the packages got damaged or lost on the way"
GentleGiant
14-02-11, 18:03
I use QQ mail; it allows 30-50MB attachments as standard, and you can get upgrades to allow larger file sizes.
GB file sizes would be stupid, but an increase over the pathetic 10-12Mb most ISP's allow would be welcome.
Toonshorty
14-02-11, 18:07
Let me run through it properly this time:
A 56Kb connection does 7KB/s.
A 1GB file is 1000MB which is 1024000KB.
1024000/7 is 146285.71 seconds.
This is 2438 minutes or 40.6 hours which is 1.6 days.
But who got a 56K connection when they had dialup?
The best I got was around 44Kbps... Ah, those days... Had to uuencode/bin2hex files...
GentleGiant
15-02-11, 14:44
56k was the theoretical limit, including overheads, I do not know anyone who got more than 52k including overheads; my best was 48k.
Same as "Up to 8meg BB" will only give you about 7.5Mbps
GentleGiant
You only need large Attachments for all your readers Readers Wives pron. :D :p
.
oddly, I had this one today from a client I support.
10Mb max mailsize and 512Mb max mailbox size. They use IMAP, so allowing large attachments will soon eat that lot up at default settings as they are.
Added a few 000000's on the end, the box has 4% disk usage :lol:
DT.
Had to uuencode/bin2hex files...That still happens. It is just that the mail software does it for you in the background..
You know I think this is just headline grabbing. Like the whole "Virgin Media calls for 'Up To' to be scrapped" when they blatantly do it themselves and still do!
Reminds me of Ryan air wheeling out the old "We're going to charge £1 for using the toilets" or "We will have planes with special standing seats."
Total rubbish and intended to get some free advertising.
GentleGiant
17-02-11, 21:54
GentleGiant
You only need large Attachments for all your readers Readers Wives pron. :D :p.
Actually, I used it for transferring copies of all my holiday snaps to Su's PC, receiving copies of all the photos she took during our time together, and for forwarding an English Language course to her.
Sending it by post would have taken a month!!!
The main problem with QQ mail is the speed, or lack of it. QQ is so popular in China that the site can really drag sometimes.
(They have had 128 million users online at the same time, even now - 5am for them, there are nearly 36 million users online.)
Wonder what the Chinese Authorities think of your rather large Attachments. :D
Gunslinger
18-02-11, 09:45
(They have had 128 million users online at the same time, even now - 5am for them, there are nearly 36 million users online.)
that is just the chinese being lazy and leaving every dam pc and app running and connected to the internet, if they polled that server to give ACTIVE users it would be a different story ;)
wow, i'd never thought i'd see QQ outside of china......
don't know what's the deal with it, it's full of ad/spyware. i'd rather install a virus myself than to install QQ or use any of its services.
MobiusPizza
18-02-11, 16:05
QQ is no worse than Windows Live Messenger 2011 in terms of amount of adware and bloatware. Windows Live Messenger 2011 took 10 minutes to install on my PC, that's just the messenger alone, (no Mail client, Movie maker, whatever the crap they put in the installer)
If not for the fact that all my friends use MSN I'd have ditched that long ago. QQ is excellent as IM. I am just talking about basic features such as ability to quickily do screenshots, Paste pictures or audio content from clipboard
GentleGiant
20-02-11, 00:18
Wonder what the Chinese Authorities think of your rather large Attachments. :D
I dont know, although I did complain about the small size of their condoms, even the Durex ones were smaller than the same package in the UK; although you did get 3 extra, free with every box of 12.:D:D
Re, actually online.
Most Chinese use internet cafes or mobile phones to connect, so people are not connected 24/7.
I read somewhere recently that there are now more Chinese using the internet than every other nationality added together, so 135 million isnt really that many!!:surprised:
QQ International has only been out of BETA for a couple of months, but so far there is little sign of bloat or malware; in fact the file share system blocks .exe files, you have to change the suffix and tell the other person to save it outside of QQ and change the suffix back again.
Were you using the BETA, or the Chinese language version??
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